Tag: Linux

Proposed law scheduled for a vote next week originally increased Americans’ e-mail privacy. Then law enforcement complained. Now it increases government access to e-mail and other digital files. Nudifier: Turn Any Photo Into a Hilarious Censored Nude. WordPress To Accept Bitcoins. Congresswoman asks Reddit community to help write bill targeted at bogus copyright takedowns. Microsoft’s New Data Center Will Be Fueled by Poop. Google Glass Could Be the Virtual Dieting Pill of the Future. Security researcher found guilty of conspiracy and identity fraud in ‘hackless’ AT&T iPad hack. Probable Rogue Planet Spotted. Copyright Troll Links to TorrentFreak, Antics Ensue. Valve’s Big Picture Could Be a Linux Game Console. Nanoparticles Stop Multiple Sclerosis In Mice.

The Internet declares it’s freedom. Def Leppard is re-recording it’s entire back catalogue to screw Universal. A German university is suing one of its former students over early graduation. Will the ubiquitous Gideon bible be replaced by a Kindle? Windows 8 upgrade priced at only $39.99. The porn industry is positioning itself to be a very natural bedfellow to Google’s Project Glass. Want to leak the goings-on in that staff meeting to the world outside with some style? Use a transparency grenade! Cisco locks it’s own customers out of using their own routers until they agree to use a service that will spy on their Internet usage. Blizzard drops the banhammer on Linux users, because using Linux is cheating in Diablo III. A New Jersey court says it’s not illegal to look at someone elses email if they forget to log out before they leave the computer.

Charles Carreon sues everybody. Learn a language for free with Duolingo. An NYU student develops the best robot ever. An old lady gets her retirement paid for by the Internet. US regains title of best supercomputer in the world. The Unity 4 3D engine will natively support Linux. Apple is stealing ANdroid people with the cunning use of AirPlay. Twitter rolls out expanded tweets. A malware author taunts security researchers using built-in chat. All this and a recent study and an Oh Asia You So Crazy!

MAKE announces the winner of their 2010 Zombie Safe House Competition. Ever hear of the Naga Viper pepper? Just reading about it will start you on fire. A researcher at the University of Nottingham has managed to etch the entire periodic table of elements onto a single hair. The Kinect has been hacked to play World of Warcraft. Vladmir Putin has ordered the Russian government to move to GNU/Linux. A man caught UPS tampering with his packages, listen in to find out how. Plus, the Study of the Week, the Fail of the Week, and this weeks “Oh Asia, You So Crazy!”

I feel pretty strongly about copyright. For me it started because of “free” software. I’m cheap and I don’t like to pay for things if I don’t have to and I was always happy to try out a free piece of software (and open to figuring out how to use a not-so-free piece of software too). This lead me to find open source software, which at first just meant “open source = free” to me. As my understanding of the open source movement grew, so did my opinion on copyright.

I feel pretty strongly about copyright. For me it started because of “free” software. I’m cheap and I don’t like to pay for things if I don’t have to and I was always happy to try out a free piece of software (and open to figuring out how to use a not-so-free piece of software too). This lead me to find open source software, which at first just meant “open source = free” to me. As my understanding of the open source movement grew, so did my opinion on copyright.

Copyright and patent laws in this country are outdated, outmoded, and generally ludicrous. The fact that Microsoft can patent some of the most basic algorithms in computer science for the sole purpose of suing someone for copyright infringement if they don’t like that product is absurd to me. Copyrighting what can be considered common knowledge or fundamental knowledge in the field is just plain stupid to me and I feel like its a travesty that there are all these worthless patents and copyrights out there miring people in the terrible legality of things. This kind of thing stunts innovation and hurts the industry.

While the open source movement is relatively young and still developing, look at how much innovation has come from that sector: projects like Open Office (an office application suite), Apache (what most web servers run to host web sites), Linux (operating system), GIMP (image editing software) all open source and all very well developed projects.

Each project has a community that builds up around it, drawing more people as it becomes more popular. People report bugs, people fix bugs, the project becomes better, more people start to use it, rinse and repeat. The most insignificant person in the world has a say in the project and anybody with the know-how is capable of patching bugs. If the project wasn’t open source, would things remain this way? Look at the way Microsoft handles things with their products. Most of the time a bug is found its treated the way most of corporate America operates and that is, hush the person that found it, stick your head in the sand, and hope it goes away. There was recently a security flaw discovered in Windows that reaches back to 1993 and every operating system released by Microsoft since then up to and including Windows 7. A 17 year old vulnerability that Microsoft just pretended wasn’t there until somebody made it public. I’m not saying that every piece of closed source software is maintained in the same way, I’m just saying its harder to find and patch bugs when only your people can look at the code.

At this point I’ve made it pretty clear that I like free software and that I don’t want to have to pay for things. How then, in my Utopian world where all software is free, does a developer or company make money enough to justify creating the software in the first place? I honestly don’t know, but I think the Red Hat folks are on the right path. Red Hat creates the Red Hat Linux distribution under an open source license, so its free to use and free to be tinkered with. The way they make money is by charging enterprises for support, and a nominal fee for CD/DVDs (this isn’t required, you can download a copy for free from their site). With a support contract, you can call them up when you have a problem you can’t solve yourself and they’ll have someone help you solve it to the best of their ability. If other companies can come up with similar ways to make money and just let us poor folks have our free software, the world would be a better place.

This week we show the relation between World of Warcraft guilds and real world gangs. We talk about Google Goggles, HUD ski goggles, and how the Square payment system will work. Wacky devices galore! A clock has been created, based on the Weasley’s clock in Harry Potter, that shows the location of your family members, and a mood chair that knows exactly how your butt feels. Plus, a Linux alternative to Rock Band. All this and the Fark Headline of the Week and the Question of the Week.

Brooklynites have redefined the phrase “dumpster diving.” Sony creates the all too literal Virtual Library for eBooks. We discuss why linux notebook battery life still sucks. Police try to trick hackers in New Zealand with hilarious results. San Francisco has opened its data through datasf.org. Also in SF, someone set up a life size Candyland. Papa John Schnatter opens up a pizza giveaway to try to hunt down his high school camaro. NMU, a university near our alma mater, has teamed up with Motorola to present WiMAX to its students. We also discuss adult temper tantrums and McDonald’s new campaign to appeal to black people. All this plus the Fark Headline of the Week and Question of the Week.